Bekah (York) Blood has been a member of our Mission Valley Community Since 1995. Both her dad (Steve York) and her Husband (Charlie Blood) grew up and have spent most of their lives living in the Mission Valley. She graduated from Polson High School in 1999 and moved back to Mission Valley to work in the public school system in 2005. She married Charlie in 2002. They have two kids Sierra (15) and Gabe (12). She has been working as an educator for 19 years, first working at Dixon and then Two Eagle River. She took 3 years off to get her Specialist degree in School Psychology. After completing her internship, she worked in Polson for a year and then moved on to Ronan where she has been working as their school psychologist for the past 3 years.

In the Spring of 2023, Bekah started having increased abdominal issues and Doctor's decided to investigate further. Bekah was diagnosed with NeuroEndocrine Tumors, NET is a very slow growing cancer that have metastasized throughout her body including 30+ tumors on her liver, unfortunately being at stage 4, her cancer is not curable. Since last year she gets a monthly injection to stop the cancer from growing, she also has had numerous procedures including a resection of her intestines to remove the primary tumor. Part of the difficulty with this cancer is Montana has limited options for treatment. She asked for a referral to the Mayo Clinic and received one to the main clinic in Rochester Minnesota.

Bekah has visited Mayo Clinic four times in the last ten months, including recently in July. It has been determined that she needs a complicated liver surgery and will complete the surgery on August 15 in order to extend and improve the quality of her life.

These trips are expensive and have taken a huge financial burden on not just Bekah, Charlie and their kids, but her parents and sister Emily's family as well as they have all traveled with her to Minnesota. We are setting up a fundraiser in order to help with any and all costs related to her travel expenses over this next month and in the future. Funds will be used to assist with Bekah's ongoing medical expenses for her cancer treatment, travel expenses to and from the Mayo Clinic for Bekah and a caregiver, as well as for lost wages during her recovery and any possible future visits.

Thank you, anything would help.

Kindest Regards,

Kim and Steve York